Patti Smith met Robert Mapplethorpe quite accidentally in the mid-60s in Manhattan. The two then paired up in the bohemian underground that had given rise to Andy Warhol's Factory and would soon produce CBGBs and punk in general.

The two were romantic partners for two or three years until Robert started to realize he was gay. The friendship would never falter until Mapplethorpe's death in 1989 and that, I feel, was definitely not the end to their bond.

Patti Smith's prose is as luminous as you might expect and the recollections of the now-vanished Lower East Side artistic subculture poignant and inspiring.